


Once We Were One

by ProwlingThunder



Series: We May Be Better Strangers [5]
Category: Saint Seiya, Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: Bodysharing, Conversations, Gen, Lucid Dreaming, Prophetic Dreams, Seer!Alone, Time is Flexible, Timetravel via Reincarnation, Visions of the Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:58:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2385887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone has some much needed conversations with the person who's words carry the most weight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once We Were One

Sometimes, Alone dreamed of things that had not happened yet.  
  
  
Tonight he dreamed again, as he had many times; this time of a young man roughly his age, with hair the color of red wine and a matching set of fathomless aqua eyes that seemed to pierce right through Alone's flesh and into his leashed soul.  
  
They stood, he realized in a flare of terror, in front of the Cathedral’s Painting, surrounded by what might have been the Cathedral itself. He did not dare turn to look. He knew if he did, he would recognize it, and he did not want that. He spent all his waking hours in the Cathedral, working on the Last Canvas; he did not want it to invade his dreams, too.  
  
Except that it had, and now, he and the stranger were staring up at it. His lips twisted into a strange smile; bittersweet and apologetic, both, though Alone could not fathom why. “We never did like this painting. It always sends the wrong message. But We are glad you have let Us see it; the sentimental value alone...”  
  
The voice seemed wrong for the other. Too old, too deep.  
  
Alone felt himself blush, and his own lips and tongue stammered a response. “Thank you. You are welcome to come visit any time; it is an honor to have you visit.”  
  
The wine-haired man turned his attention from the painting to look at Alone, his voice softening, younger and less tortured. “If you will have Us, then We shall come. Thank you, Alonzo.”  
  
“Alone,” Alone told him reflexively, then mentally sighed. It was a dream of the future, and the future could not be changed. Nothing he did could truly be done, the other had not heard him, surely--  
  
The stranger's expression was unreadable for a moment, and then, he nodded. “As you wish... Alone.”  
  
They talked a little longer, passing small-talk and nothing more, but when Alone woke in the wee hours of the morning to Pandora's call, he felt that something had changed.  
  
He just didn't know what.  
  
  
Alone did not dream of the red-head for a while, after, running on little sleep, holding court with Minos, Aiacos, and Rhadamanthys to further delay work on the Last Canvas. They were eager to spend time with him, and with his constant shadow, neither Pandora nor Lord Hypnos oft came close. They seemed to notice-- if not his relief, than the easy pleasure he found their company to be. Hades' Specters were so eager to know him that Alone felt a little guilty that he was not Hades. None of them seemed to care, though, or even realize.  
  
There was peace in that.  
  
  
He dreamed of the red-headed stranger again, only after he bled the town, after he found the perfect shade of red for Tenma's eyes. So full of self-loathing, he was surprised to find them sitting on a pier with their feet hanging in the water, pants rolled up to their knees.  
  
Alone blinked at their surroundings. Pure blue water stretched as far as the eye could see, save far to the left and right, where it crested against the arms of a giant cove. He had never seen such a sight.  
  
The dissonance between his surroundings and his inner self was so different that it was almost painful. He glanced at his toes, baffled. Tiny little fish of rainbow colors swam between his feet and the dock, scales brushing over his flesh like butterfly kisses. A black and white water snake wove lazily through the water, over someone else's pale feet.  
  
The wine-haired stranger said, “Beautiful, are they not? My brother's domain is so vast and so varied. One could waste away mortal lives trying to catalog everything in his home, do you not think so?”  
  
“This is the first time I have ever been here.” It is not a lie even from Alone, even though he knew this to be a dream of things that had not happened yet, of a life that was not his.  
  
They talked about the oceans and the beaches and the deep, infinite blackness of the water's fathoms until Alone woke up to Pandora stroking his cheek.  
  
He held on to the slipping knowledge that there were still living things in the future, and that Pandora would fail, had already failed. It steadied him and gave him strength to keep moving.  
  
But then the reason slipped through his fingers like grains of sand.  
  
  
He dreamed of him again, on and off. More and more often, every time he closed his eyes.  
  
He slept little, in Pandora's glorified bird cage. With no day and no night to tell time, and no other way to exhaust himself, he merely painted. Slow and careful, precise, with as little of Hades' power as he could manage.  
  
The Canvas still filled much too fast.  
  
“It always does,” the red-head admitted, perched next to him on the swing. He reached out to touch the immaterial fingers of the girl Alone was painting, and Alone realized he was dreaming again. He must have fallen asleep without even realizing it. The thought was rather alarming.  
  
But if he was dreaming, there was no cause to paint. He let his arm drop, settled the brush on his lap. “What?”  
  
“Death.” Short, and simple, with the sort of finality Alone had been trying to affect the whole time. “It always comes much too fast. Life, We find, is too short.”  
  
Alone frowned a little. “I am the God of Death.” He said it was much because that was what people were calling him as that was what he was telling them. He was not Hades by any measure, but the Specters wanted and needed him to be. Pandora... well. Pandora thought he was merely distracted, lingering on Alone's human sentiments. Which was just as well. If she came calling, that was what she needed to see, to believe the falsehood.  
  
The redhead turned to him, smiling. Soft and sweet. Hopeful, too, he guessed. Maybe a little wistful. His fingers itched to paint him, to immortalize that face on a canvas forever. He curled the digits into his robes instead; everything he tried to memorialize died.  
  
“Are you now? Or are you Alone?”  
  
“You are here,” Alone said. He didn't like the way the stranger pronounced the word, the way he hung affects on it, like he was really saying his name.  
  
“We suppose We are.” The stranger watched him for a moment, stained glass eyes watching him intently. Alone resisted the urge to squirm. Then the other reached slim fingers up, and brushed callouses against Alone's face, around his neck, through his hair. “It is so soft... what color is it?”  
  
Alone's brow furrowed. “My hair is black.”  
  
The stranger blinked and recovered his hand, grabbing locks of his own to look at it. Then he looked at Alone, mirroring something like a wary, hopeful cat. “What is Ours?”  
  
He swallowed. It was a harmless question. Innocent, too, in a way that froze him all the way down to the bone. He could feel his heart beat in his chest, loud and painful against his ribs. “Red,” Alone said at last. “Like an ocean of blood bathed in a harvest sunset.” Like the color of Tenma's eyes.  
  
“So it is so. I had wondered...” The stranger-- though Alone was no longer sure he was a stranger to him-- smiled again. He had the feeling they were no longer talking about hair at all, that the context had shifted somehow.  
  
The silence there stretched for ages. Then finally, he stood up before him. Reached down and collected the paintbrush off Alone's lap, bringing it up between them. Gone were the smiles, the harmless innocence. In their place was a serious young man, mouth pressed into a thin line, attention focused wholly down on him.  
  
“This is you, and this brush is mightier than all the swords in Greece. Would that you had been Mine, Alone, Mine from the very beginning, and we both may have learned much.”  
  
“I do not--”  
  
“You know.” The stranger cut him off. “You have always known. But you must remember: this brush is mighty. It has changed the canvas. And that was enough.” He shifted his grip, and held it down to him. Hesitantly, Alone accepted it back from him. The other nodded once, then stepped back from him.  
  
“I still do not--”  
  
“You do.” The young man disagreed. “Believe Us, you do. Whatever you do from now, you must not stop painting.”  
  
Did he have a choice? He didn't think so. Hypnos expected the Canvas to be painted, and Pandora was the hawk guarding his door.  
  
After a moment he realized the other was still staring at him. Waiting, patiently, watching Alone with those keen eyes that seemed to know too much. Like he could wait forever. Like he already knew all the secrets Alone had tried to hide, and all those he was still trying to do so with.  
  
“...I think I understand.”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
Alone pressed his lips and considered. Did he? Did he really?  
  
“No,” he admitted at last. “I do not. But I will. And I will not stop painting.”  
  
The young man's expression softened again. Reminiscent? “She picked you well.”  
  
  
When Alone woke, he picked up his brush and continued the Canvas. For once, the context of the dream did not fade from him, and when at last Hypnos visited to check his progress, Alone was ready.  
  
He finally understood. He had done enough.  
  
Hades Himself had told him so.


End file.
